AIR, DD employees on 2-day strike

Chennai: As part of their nation-wide strike, Employees of Prasar Bharati affiliated to National Federation of Akashvani and Doordarshan Employees (NFADE) here commenced a 48-hour "duty boycott" from today to press for various demands, including repealing of the Prasar Bharati Act.

More than 200 employees, especially from programming, technical and engineering sections, began their protest from 9 am and alleged that the "12 years of Prasar Bharati experiment" had "dented" the reputation of All India Radio and Doordarshan, NFADE sources said.

Regional channels of DD in Tamil Nadu, including 'Podhigai' and all AIR channels including Chennai A, Chennai B, FM and commercial channels went off air since morning, sources said.

AIR, with 336 broadcasting centres, serves 99 per centof the country population, while DD, with a network of 60 production centres and 1,404 transmitters, reaches to 94 per cent of the total population, they said.